The Price I Would Pay
by DianeB
Summary: Jadzia's symbiont, Dax, helps Jadzia understand that the cost of reassociation is too high. Inspired by the fiendishly daring episode "Rejoined."


Author's Note: (11/00) This was written in June, 1999, and is set after the events of "Rejoined." Dax helps Jadzia understand that reassociation can come with a very high price tag. Rated PG.

Disclaimer: Paramount owns it all. Always has, always will. I accept this.

The Price I Would Pay  
by DianeB

Anyone watching could have reached out and touched the pain, and, of course, they were _all_ watching, from various points around the Promenade. They saw the anguish flood Jadzia's delicate features, as Doctor Kahn, arriving last at the airlock, cast her eyes upward and locked them with Jadzia's.

Jadzia felt the symbiont within her lurch once and then go utterly still. If it hadn't been for the white-knuckled grip she had on the railing, she would have collapsed to the thinly-padded floor of the Promenade's upper deck. As Lenara dragged her gaze from her and disappeared into the airlock, Jadzia knew with painful certainty that she would never see her again. She was not at all sure she could live without her.

Then she filled her lungs deeply, exhaled, willed her strict training to settle her heart and soul, turned and strode purposefully away. She passed both Kira and Sisko without registering their presence.

Watching her pass, Benjamin Sisko wished he had more firmly suggested that his Science Officer use some of her accumulated leave time. She had refused when Dr. Lenara Kahn first came aboard the station, and even after all that had transpired since then, she was still insistent that she could handle it. Sisko knew without a doubt that the Old Man could, but he was not so sure about Jadzia. He realized with a start that it was not since Jadzia's _Zhian'tara_ ceremony that he had thought of Jadzia, Curzon and Dax as such separate entities, and even then it had been different. He only knew that he did not want Jadzia to go unwatched. He turned to his first officer, standing beside him.

"Major, keep your eye on Jadzia for the next few days, would you please?"

Kira did not hesitate. "Yes, sir," and stepped away from the railing she had been leaning against to follow the Trill.

The thing about Deep Space Nine, despite its size, was that it was like living in a fish bowl, as Chief O'Brien liked to put it. There was very little chance of hiding anything from anybody. Jadzia, however, was determined to try. She made it to her quarters and entered, locking it behind her. She went directly to the dresser in her bedroom and picked up the Klingon earrings Lenara had given her at dinner three nights ago, lifting them to her lips. She took them and went back to the living room and up to the huge oval window she adored. She stood there staring until her eyes burned, clutching the earrings to her chest.

She surrendered to her emotions then, allowing the despair and the emptiness to fill her and surround her and overwhelm her until she could no longer remain on her feet. Sinking to her knees in front of that beautiful oval starfield, she wept into her hands, into the earrings, big gasping sobs that tore harshly at her throat. She wept for the pain and loss of seven-going-on-eight lifetimes, but it was for this eighth that the tears were most bitter. Lenara was gone. Torias and Nelani were long gone. From her soul out to her spots, she could feel no one but Jadzia, this young host, and there was nothing in the life she had lived so far to prepare her for this crushing, desolate ache. She wept until there were no more tears, and then, without energy left to move, she folded her slim frame to the floor and slept, deeply and without dreams, with no hope of gaining any strength from it. The earrings slid together with a gentle metallic clink and fell from her grasp to the floor.

Outside in the empty corridor, Kira sat against the wall and listened to the heartbreaking grief pouring from her friend and did the only thing left to her at that moment: she wept as well.

**oOo oOo oOo**

In the days that followed, Jadzia threw herself into her work; rather into _Lenara's_ work. It was surely the exact same work that Lenara herself would be doing once she arrived back on Trill, but that did not stop Jadzia. She went over every inch of the artificial wormhole project, searching for anything, any little anomaly or energy spike that might be a reason to contact her. But after three days of looking and very little nourishment or sleep, she didn't find anything that she didn't already know Lenara would see.

Late in the afternoon of the third day, in one of the smaller science labs, with no other personnel around, she allowed herself one outward display of exhaustion by rubbing her eyes hard with the heels of her hands, puffing her cheeks and blowing air. Intending only to take a few moments, she leaned forward to rest her head in her arms on the panel at which she had been working.

She was asleep before she was all the way down. And this time, in this most uncomfortable position, she began to dream, but it wasn't really a dream at all.

If Jadzia had felt as though Dax had deserted her during these past few days, it was because – inasmuch as the symbiont could – it _had_. Dax had been around a long time, and it carried with it the emotional baggage of seven-going-on-eight lifetimes. It had learned early on when to withdraw enough to let its hosts try to work things out for themselves. Now, however, Dax realized that Jadzia had come to the end of her rope.

With the young woman's resistance down and her consciousness elsewhere, Dax moved in. It brought forth specific memories for Jadzia, memories it had heretofore purposely withheld. These memories were taken from the most outrageous host Dax had known, Curzon. For while even Curzon had known that the price of reassociation was too high, he had also known Trill who had paid it. It was memories of Curzon's friendships with reassociated Trill that Dax finally shared with Jadzia.

**oOo oOo oOo**

Curzon knew six Trill, three couples, who had decided that their love was strong enough and precious enough to suffer exile from the Trill homeworld. This was not a decision any of them had come by lightly, nor had they done it with "complete disregard for Trill society," a phrase bandied about by both Jadzia and Lenara. The hosts had spent hours in inner consultation with their symbionts, as well as further hours of everything from unpleasant conversations right up to screaming matches with family, friends, and the entire Trill Symbiosis Commission. The whole process was altogether great enough a price to pay, without the additional price of exile, and all six hosts and their symbionts knew they would carry the cost to their graves.

Not that each couple's case was exactly the same. The hosts Antony and Geneva, having been childhood friends, had much in common to start with; after surviving the Trill initiate training together, they liked to swap stories about what a living hell that experience had been. They had no idea who their symbionts were going to be, and when they first laid eyes on each other after the joining, it was much like Jadzia and Lenara: they were in love almost before they could admit it to themselves. Almost.

The difference was that Antony and Geneva had already fallen deeply in love during training, though they kept this from the Symbiosis Commission. That their symbionts, Cobo and Har, had been previously joined to two others who had also loved one another was merely icing on the cake. No question. No discussion. At least not between the two Trill. They wanted to be together and they knew what it would cost.

They were currently living on a well-populated, free-thinking world one star system removed from Trill, content in the nature of their lives and busy publishing every word and every experience they could scour from their symbionts, who between them had lived sixteen lifetimes.

The second couple, Kimba and Rose, made no bones about their abject dislike for one another, from the very second they met on the first day of initiate training. However, the symbionts joined to them, Fel and Evan, carried potent memories of a scorching love affair between two previous hosts that had, even after seven years, shown no sign of diminished passion until one of the hosts had a heart attack while in a particularly compromising position with his partner.

This was mighty hard stuff to resist and in the end, Kimba and Rose could not. Immediately after their formal exile, they went and got married and relocated to Earth. Not too many people were privy to the special physiology of this couple, for they had their spots surgically erased and were living in New Orleans as regular humans. In fact, they frequented Benjamin Sisko's father's restaurant. Joseph Sisko was in on the secret and went to great effort to create Creole Trill dishes to please them.

Their love blossomed over the years, and while they never attained the same level of passion as their previous hosts, they did manage a convincing display of affection, which was not nearly so much of an act as they would have liked people to believe.

The third couple, Erik and Dew, did not fare quite so well, and Dax was most worried about sharing their story with Jadzia. Curzon had spent the most time with Erik and Dew and had stood with them when they told the Symbiosis Commission of their plans.

On the night before Erik and Dew planned on going to the Commission, they invited Curzon to dinner. The old Trill was no fool, and had suspected that something very serious was up with these two. He knew it was only a matter of time before they would tell him. Judging by their manner during dinner, which had been a twitching combination of excitement and fear, Curzon figured tonight was the night. He decided to beat them to it.

"So, when were you planning on telling the SymCom?"

They feigned innocence for about three seconds before bursting into huge grins, grabbing each other's hands, and turning two sets of rounded, glistening eyes to him. The only imbalance to this display of quivering devotion was the fact that their spots were standing out in unhealthy contrast against too-pale skin.

Dew spoke. "Oh, Curzon, we wanted to tell you before, but the time never…"

Erik cut her off. "We're going tomorrow morning."

Curzon was neither upset because they hadn't told him sooner, nor surprised by the news that they were going the next morning. He certainly knew what it was like to be young and in love. He wondered briefly which of the former hosts it had been, but he dismissed his curiosity, since it didn't really matter, and there were bigger issues at stake. He knew the rules. He knew _they_ knew the rules.

"You know what will happen, don't you?"

"Yes," they said in unison, gripping each other's hands tightly. "Curzon? Will you stand with us tomorrow?" This from Erik, with Dew's eyes silently begging him to say yes.

Despite the gravity of the situation, Curzon chuckled to himself. This wasn't the first time he had stirred the pot, and he figured it probably wouldn't be the last. "And why would I want to do anything else?" He reached across the table and they untangled their hands to take one of his in each of theirs.

The proceedings had been predictably brief. Erik and Dew were not willing to give up reassociation. The Symbiosis Commission was unwilling and unable to allow it. The verdict, exile. When the hosts died, the symbionts would die.

Curzon stood solid as a rock between Erik and Dew, arms encircling both waists, nodding gravely at the appropriate moments, and smiling when he knew he had said something to irritate one or more members of the Commission. This was his favorite sport, after all. The gathering adjourned in less than fifteen minutes.

Afterwards, Curzon walked them to the shuttleport, even though he was strictly forbidden to do so. They bid farewell, and Dew hugged him fiercely. They swore they would figure out a way to keep in touch, and Curzon did not doubt that. He had his own connections and he knew Erik did, as well. But Curzon knew he would never see them again, and he silently cursed the rules of his race and the Commission who continued to believe they could regulate matters of the heart.

**oOo oOo oOo**

At first Erik and Dew had lived blissfully on a small tropical world far from any metropolitan area and anyone who might judge them. It took only five months, however, for them to realize the error of their decisions. By that time, it was far too late for Dew.

A fast-growing cancer was eating away at her lungs, and each labored breath became increasingly painful. One day, in the pale light of one of the few sunrises on the rainforest planet, Dew's lungs gave up the struggle. Her symbiont, Parta, did not survive much more than an hour after that.

A moment later, Erik finished his poisoned tea and quietly spooned himself for the last time behind his partner, his arm wrapped protectively around her. There was no chance his symbiont, Pforr, could have remained alive any longer than he had.

When word reached Curzon, he wept.

**oOo oOo oOo**

Dax did not want Jadzia to end as Erik and Dew had. If Lenara had stayed on the station and continued her work with the artificial wormhole, it might very well have happened in a similar fashion, since prolonged exposure to dangers like plasma radiation meant a certain and painful death. Dax knew if Lenara died, Jadzia would want to die, too. Whatever part of the symbiont that was just Dax and not simply the combined product of eight lifetimes, it could not bear to let this happen. Though Dax had been concerned about sharing the story of Erik and Dew, it knew it could not afford to do anything less.

As Jadzia slept on the science panel, the symbiont Dax offered up these stories and all its feelings to its youngest host, blending them seamlessly into her conscious memory, content in the knowledge that it had done the right thing and that Jadzia would be okay.

**oOo oOo oOo**

A door hissed open of the far side of the lab. Kira stepped in and cast her eyes around the room until she saw Jadzia with her head on the panel. Crossing the room, Kira cupped her hand around Jadzia's narrow shoulder and shook her as gently as she could.

"Jadzia?"

"Mmm?" Jadzia came awake with the full realization that Dax had not deserted her after all. She shook her head to clear it, rubbed at a crick in her neck, stretched gracefully, and turned to Kira, a broad smile illuminating her face. Kira smiled in response, glad for the sure sign of Jadzia's better health.

"Nerys, I just had the strangest dream, but I don't believe it was a dream at all." She paused. "Dax has helped me to understand more clearly the price I would pay for reassociation." She turned to look straight into Kira's eyes, speaking with a firm conviction Kira had heard in the past and was very relieved to hear again.

"Although I _do_ love Lenara, I'm not anymore ready than she was to pay the price to be together."

As Kira watched, the lines on the Trill's face smoothed, her spots lost their stress-induced red tinge, and the circles beneath her eyes faded. Jadzia stood and draped a long, slim arm across Kira's shoulders.

"C'mon, Nerys, let's go to Quark's. I want to tell you all about it."

End


End file.
